


Like moths who've found our flames

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artist!Steve, Breakfast at Tiffany's AU, F/M, M/M, Prostitution, Threesome - F/M/M, kept man!steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 13:31:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>In which Steve is a kept man, Bucky's hiding from the Russian mob, and Natasha does what she likes.</cite> An AU loosely based on Breakfast at Tiffany's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like moths who've found our flames

**Author's Note:**

> This does contain some background Steve/Tony in which Steve is Tony's kept man, but it's not graphic and it's not the end pairing. Also, background Tony/Pepper and eventual Tony/Pepper/Bruce.

Steve moves back to Brooklyn when he gets home from Iraq. Not the old neighborhood, no. Not after Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, decides to sponsor his career as an artist. She purchases his work and hangs it in her office, introduces him to several gallery owners and agents, and sets him up in an apartment with great light and seemingly endless amounts of space. There are other artists in the building, she tells him, as well as some women who may or may not be Russian ballerinas (no one will confirm or deny), but he never sees any of them, though he can hear them partying all night, every night downstairs. 

He's not surprised there are strings attached to the offer; he's reached a point where he mostly doesn't care. Still, he _is_ surprised when it's not Pepper who shows up at his door looking for the little extra they both know their agreement included. But Stark is handsome enough and he knows what he's doing in bed. It's an enjoyable way to pay the rent, anyway, and Tony never asks about Iraq. So Steve never asks about Afghanistan or Pepper or why he keeps his t-shirt on while they fuck. The low blue glow is reason enough, though Steve keeps trying to replicate the light on canvas.

After the first few times, Steve even starts to think of him as a friend. Neither of them have many of those. 

He doesn't meet his downstairs neighbor for weeks. There's an unpronounceable name on the doorbell and nothing but loud, thumping music every night. Steve paints through it and sleeps late. Sometimes, he watches the people come and go, their faces shadowed and their voices loud and slurred. He sketches them in random bursts, plans out a mural of them dancing beneath strobing streetlights, all primary colors and swathes of black. He thinks about introducing himself, asking if they'll let him paint it on their walls, but he never works up the nerve to do it. Parties have never been his thing.

Once, he breaks up a fight, sends a bully home with a black eye for laying hands on a girl who said no. 

"I was handling it," she says as she lights a cigarette, the flame from her lighter the same color as her hair. Her skin is flawless and her eyes are clear. 

Steve backs off, hands held up, knuckles still stinging. "Okay."

"But thank you." She goes up on her tiptoes and kisses him, her mouth tasting of cigarettes and alcohol. Her tongue curls around his and heat sparks through him. She presses herself to him, legs suddenly whipped around his hips. She's not wearing any underwear beneath the skirt and he can feel the wet heat of her through his jeans. Her ass is smooth and firm in his hands and she laughs when he squeezes it. He swings them around so she's pressed up against the brick building, her mouth hard and hot under his and the hand not holding her cigarette already unzipping his jeans and curling around his dick. 

"Condom?" he manages to ask.

She laughs and flicks away her cigarette and then guides him inside her. He should argue. He doesn't. She feels so good. The slick heat and friction makes him groan, hips thrusting instinctively. She bites at his mouth and scrapes her nails up under his t-shirt. Later, he'll realize she drew blood. 

He tightens his hands on her ass again, fingers digging into firm flesh as he tries to hold off his orgasm until she comes. She reaches between them and fingers herself, her skirt blocking his view, but he can feel the brush of her knuckles against his skin. It makes him suck in a deep breath that tastes like rainy night air and sex. Her hair gets in his mouth as he kisses her temple, slides his lips down her jaw. He's vaguely surprised it doesn't burn his tongue. She clenches around him and comes (or fakes it, anyway, he can't tell) with a guttural moan that resonates through him. The sound sinks a hook somewhere deep in his belly and tugs, unraveling him from the inside out. He slams her hard against the wall as he comes. She laughs and shakes in his arms, her teeth sharp against his throat and her hands now fisted in his shirt.

He's still trying to catch his breath and figure out how he let things go so far when a voice from inside calls, "Natalia! You all right?" 

She pulls away with a sly half-smile, unwrapping her legs from around him as gracefully as untying a bow. "Fine," she calls. "I'll be right in." She grins up at Steve and presses another quick kiss to his tingling lips. "I was handling it," she repeats, "but thank you." And then she's gone. 

He could follow her. He's pretty sure nobody checks invitations at these shindigs, and even if they did, he lives upstairs, so he could just say he was stopping in to meet the neighbors. 

He doesn't, though. He's pretty sure her gratitude doesn't extend that far. He goes back up the fire escape and settles in for a long night at his easel. He paints a woman who's half flame, red hair flaring behind her like an inferno as she dances across a shadowed cityscape, setting it all on fire. He falls asleep in the early light of dawn.

*

Steve's sitting on his bed, sketchpad in his lap, trying to work out the composition of the latest painting Pepper's commissioned, when someone knocks at his window. At first, he thinks it's the late October wind, barely audible over the thumping bass from downstairs, but the sound is too regular, and when he looks up, a figure is crouched on the fire escape, distorted by the old, smeared glass.

Steve shoves up the window and the guy--it's a guy--climbs in, rueful smile on his face. He closes the window behind him with a shiver and a muttered, "Brr," and leans against the sill. 

"Thanks, man. Got some unexpected guests, owe them money, you know how it goes. Cigarette?" The guy offers him a pack of Camels but Steve shakes his head. "You don't mind if I do?" 

Steve does mind, very much, in fact, but the guy doesn't give him a chance to say no. Now that Steve can see him clearly, pale face wreathed in smoke, cheeks hollowed and eyes closed in enjoyment of that first drag, he recognizes him. "Bucky?"

The guy's eyes fly open. "I haven't heard that name in years. Do I know you?"

"It's me, Steve. From the group home."

"Little Stevie Rogers, who looked like a stiff wind would knock him over?" Bucky gives him a lingering once-over that makes his skin tingle and tighten. "Man, you grew up nice. What've you been up to?"

"I joined the army." Steve laughs nervously, feeling the tips of his ears burn. Bucky'd been his only friend for a long time, had defended him against bullies and other predators when he'd been too small and sickly to defend himself. Bucky had shared his food and his money and, most importantly, his time and attention with a kid who hadn't had enough of any of it in years, and Steve had drunk it in like a flower seeing the sun for the first time. They'd made grandiose plans about moving in together, starting a business, seeing the world. And then one night, Bucky'd gone out, full of schemes and hopes, and never come back. It wasn't unusual. Steve knew what happened to kids like them on the streets. Even he'd given up on looking for Bucky after a few months, and then Dr. Erskine took him in, and he'd tried to put that life behind him for good.

"Well, you certainly are all you can be, huh, pal." Bucky takes another drag on his cigarette and then stubs it out on the sole of his shoe. His phone buzzes before Steve can answer him. "All right, it's safe for me to go back down. Thanks for the hideout."

"We should do it again sometime," Steve says and then wants to kick himself. 

Bucky just laughs, though. "Yeah, sure. I live downstairs. I'll come up for breakfast tomorrow, yeah?" 

"Sure," Steve says.

"Though it'll probably be more like lunch, okay?"

"Yeah," Steve says. "I'd like that."

"Cool." Bucky shoves the window up and disappears into the darkness, leaving Steve with a chill and a stupid grin on his face.

*

Steve doesn't get much sleep (he doesn't need much anymore); Tony shows up early and Steve can't even enjoy his visit because he's so anxious that Bucky'll arrive and everything will go horribly wrong. Which is ridiculous. It's not like he and Tony are exclusive. Tony's engaged to Pepper, for pete's sake. But he can't make himself relax. Tony senses it, because he leaves with a frown on his face, but not before he asks if everything is okay a few times, which is an unheard of level of concern from him. Not that Steve thinks Tony doesn't like him or anything. He's just usually thinking about other things, even when they're together. 

Steve's still getting dressed when Bucky pushes the door open. "Hey did I just see Tony Stark coming down the stairs?" He blinks and stares at Steve for a long moment, and Steve realizes his khakis are still unzipped and his shirt is only half-buttoned. "Oh my god, little Stevie Rogers is getting it on with Tony Stark?" Bucky laughs. "No wonder you can afford to live in this building."

"It's not like that," Steve says automatically, but Bucky raises an eyebrow. "Okay, it's totally like that." 

Bucky gives him another one of those leering once-overs. "I can see why."

"Pepper likes my art." It sounds weak even to his own hears.

"Is that what you're calling it?"

"It's true," Steve protests. "She's helping with my career." He gestures at the various canvases in half-completed states, the finished ones leaning against the walls, the figure studies and charcoal sketches taped to the otherwise blank walls.

"So you did finally go to art school?" Bucky asks, the leer absent from his voice this time. Bucky had always managed to get him art supplies, even when there was no money for them. Bucky'd been able to get anything anyone wanted in those days; it was one reason he was so popular with the other kids. Steve knew what he was doing to get them, but Bucky wouldn't hear any arguments against it, not when Steve was too sick to even play lookout for him. Sometimes it seemed like just one more miracle Bucky'd pulled out of his pocket. Steve had been willfully naïve about some things, even at sixteen.

"Yeah. I got adopted, after you...left. But then he died and there were debts and the army was a better bet than art to pay the bills."

Bucky gives him a look like he knows there's a lot more to that story, but he doesn't press. Probably because he doesn't want Steve asking him anything, either. "Uh huh." He rubs his hands together. "But enough of that. You promised me lunch and right now, brother, I could eat a horse."

It's easy to fall into step beside him, to slip into the rhythm of their banter, honed by years of depending on each other, of having no one else. 

That first day, lunch at the diner turns into a trip to Coney Island, their old childhood stomping grounds. Even though it's a blustery, gray, November day, even though everything is closed, Steve still gets a thrill when the train pulls into the station and Bucky leads him down the steps and out onto the street. His fingers itch and he finds the stub of a pencil in his jacket pocket, and a folded sheet of paper with directions from HopStop to a gallery in Soho. He sketches the Cyclone on the blank side, and Bucky's profile, and the heavy swell of the ocean against the new version of the boardwalk, built after the storm.

"You really are good at that," Bucky says, looking over his shoulder. 

Steve shrugs, pleased. "I'm bringing some paintings to a gallery in Soho in a couple of days. You should come."

"Cool," Bucky says. They sit pressed together on the subway ride back and Steve imagines he can feel the warmth of Bucky's shoulder and thigh through his clothes for the rest of the day.

*

Tony stops by to let him know that he and Pepper are going to Malibu until after Thanksgiving, but they'll be back for his gallery show at the end of the month. Steve breathes a sigh of relief and pretends the strings have been cut instead of left slack for a while.

On his way out the door, he stops and stares at the painting of Natalia. "I like this one," he says. "Art is generally Pepper's thing, but this one, I like."

"That one's not for sale," Steve says. Tony laughs, but Steve's not joking. Not even a little bit.

Bucky continues to come through his window at night now; he spends a few minutes--never longer than half an hour--smokes a cigarette, and gossips about people Steve has never heard of and has no interest in. He doesn't care; he spends the time drawing Bucky from all angles: the slope of his forehead and nose, the high, sharp angles of his cheeks, the lushness of his mouth, chapped and pink, with the ever-present cigarette dangling from the corner like some millennial version of James Dean.

Bucky cajoles him onto the Circle Line, new views of the old city endlessly renewing itself, so Steve drags him up to the Met, the Frick, the Guggenheim. 

"Your stuff is going to hang here some day," Bucky says as they walk through the museums. "People are gonna remember your name."

"What about you?" Steve asks, bumping his shoulder against Bucky's, and enjoying the heat that blooms in his chest when Bucky bumps his in response.

"I never forgot your name," Bucky answers. Steve opens his mouth to say that's not what he meant, but Bucky keeps talking. "Even when I went through some rough times. I always wondered what happened to you." He doesn't look at Steve. He stops in front of a Degas and stares at it like he can see right through it. "I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye. I--"

"Bucky, no, don't--"

"It was safer that way." He huffs softly. "You probably shouldn't even hang out with me now."

"I'm not that sickly little kid anymore," Steve says.

"No, no you certainly are not." Bucky finally glances over at him, dirty grin on his face. "So did the growth spurt hit all over? What am I saying? Of course it did. You don't get to be Tony Stark's boy toy with a small dick."

"Bucky!" Steve can feel his face flush.

Bucky crows with laughter. "Man, you are bright red. That's amazing." He pull out his phone and snaps a picture. "I am totally making that the background on my phone."

He teases Steve with it for the rest of the day, and Steve lets him, that warm feeling slowly expanding in his chest.

*

Steve finds it amusing that everyone assumes Bucky is the artist, with his wild hair and his low-slung skinny jeans and heavy-lidded, knowing eyes. Bucky plays it up sometimes, pulls out his phone and starts snapping pictures of Steve from all angles, but he always fades into the background when Steve is conducting business with gallery owners or possible buyers. One of them compliments him on his supportive boyfriend and Steve feels like a fraud for not correcting her impression, but he likes the idea so much that he wants to live with the fantasy for a while. He doesn't tell Bucky. He thinks maybe he already knows.

*

Steve hovers in the stairwell, waiting for the last of the stragglers to leave the party before he slips into Bucky's apartment. He hasn't been in here before, but the layout is familiar, though there's a lot more furniture down here. He walks softly around crushed red plastic cups and abandoned, overflowing ashtrays. The smell of sweat and hash hangs heavy in the air, tickling his nose. He can hear the murmur of low voices in the back bedroom, and he pushes open the door without thinking. 

"Hey, Bucky--Oh!"

The redhead who fucked him against the building--Natalia, if he remembers correctly--is naked and moving on top of a half-clothed Bucky, her tits bouncing as she rides him. Steve's mouth goes dry and he tries to figure out who he's most jealous of. She gives him that sly smile and arches her back, her fingers slipping down between her legs, like she knew what he was thinking when he was the one fucking her. 

He watches, mesmerized, until Bucky looks up at him. "Hey, Steve," he says as if he doesn't have a lapful of naked girl and isn't getting fucked to within an inch of his life. He raises a hand from Natalia's hip and waves it airily. "Feel free to join us. Natasha doesn't mind." He looks up at her and smiles, the warmth in his gaze palpable even to Steve. "Do you, darling?"

"Not at all," she says. "I wouldn't mind seeing him without his clothes on."

Steve makes a strangled, embarrassed noise and flees back upstairs, their laughter pursuing him.

He can't stop thinking about it, though, the perfect curve of Natalia's body, the mole on the right side of her ribcage, the small appendectomy scar on her abdomen, the neat, narrow strip of dark red hair on her cunt, the thick slide of Bucky's cock inside her. He tries to draw them but has to stop and jerk off first, remembering her slick, tight heat surrounding him, remembering the fantasies he'd had of Bucky growing up, the first person he'd ever wanted once he'd understood what it meant to want someone. The stroke of his hand is rough, merciless, as he imagines them touching him. He bites his lip when he comes, choking on their names and hoping they can't hear him.

He's cleaned up and brewing a pot of coffee when Bucky comes through the window. "Hey. Sorry about that."

"No," Steve says. "I should have knocked. It was rude."

"I meant what I said, though." Bucky gives him a tentative half-smile. "Nat couldn't stop talking about you after you punched Vasily that night." He starts sorting through the stacked up canvases scattered around the apartment. 

Steve freezes, caught. "Is she your girlfriend? Do I owe you an apology for that, too?"

Bucky laughs. "Natasha does what--and who--she likes. I'm just lucky she likes me. And you, I guess."

Steve breathes a small sigh of relief. This is why he avoids relationships. People in general, really. In the army it was different, but he doesn't know how to relate to regular people anymore. Luckily, none of the people he knows now are regular.

"Coffee?" He holds up the coffee pot and Bucky nods. Steve busies himself with milk and sugar while Bucky continues going through his paintings.

"Wow, I guess you like her, too, huh?" Bucky holds up the painting Steve had done after that night with Natalia. "This is amazing."

Steve grins, for once not brushing off the praise. "It might be the best thing I've done." Bucky stacks it with the others but Steve says, "No. I'm not selling that one yet." Probably not ever, if he can help it. He knows it's crazy, but there's too much of him in it to sell, even if Natalia is the subject.

"Probably be set for life if you did."

Steve laughs outright at that. "I think you have no idea how little my paintings actually go for."

"No, I looked you up online. You've had a couple nice sales, and not all of them to Stark's girlfriend." His face turns sly. "I don't suppose you and her--"

"No." Steve shakes his head. Not that he hadn't thought about it, but the arrangement with Tony works, and he hasn't wanted to ask for more, not after everything they've already given him.

"You know, after everything we went through, I never thought you'd be the one still having sex for money." Bucky says it casually; Steve doesn't think he intends for it to hurt the way it does.

"It's not like that." Bucky's eyebrows rise incredulously. "Okay, maybe it is, but I--"

"Hey, I know," Bucky interrupts, sounding more serious than he has since Steve reconnected with him. "I _know_. I'm not judging. We've all been there, Steve. I guess I hoped you never would be."

Steve forces his shoulders to relax again before he turns to face Bucky, coffee mug in hand. "Thanks. I guess. I know what you did for me, and I never thanked you for it then."

"Please don't thank me for it now. I didn't do it for your gratitude."

"Bucky." His tone is somewhere between chiding and pleading. He isn't sure what he means by it, except that there's so much history already and he wants to acknowledge it, and the feelings it carries with it.

Bucky takes the mug from him and places it on the counter next to the sink. Then he steps up into Steve's space and kisses him, soft brush of lips against lips, and Steve feels like his knees are going to give out. He grabs Bucky's hips, thumbs dipping below the waistband of his jeans to rub at the soft skin stretched over his hipbones, and holds on for dear life. Bucky presses a leg up between his thighs and rubs, and Steve moans into his mouth, all thought of coffee and painting and the past gone.

Bucky's phone buzzes then, and he pulls away. Steve wants to tell him to ignore it, wants to turn it off and put it down next to the untouched coffee mugs and the half-sorted paintings, but Bucky turns away from him and mutters into it in Russian.

"I've gotta go," he says, giving Steve a quick kiss and then rushing out the front door.

Steve doesn't see Bucky again for a week.

He doesn't start to worry until the third day, when he gets jumped on his way home from the grocery store. He's not a small guy anymore; Dr. Erskine got him healthy and the army bulked him up, and he still works out regularly (gym membership is another perk of his relationship with Tony and Pepper). But he still has the instincts of someone who spent a lot of years getting shoved face-first into lockers and toilet bowls. He can sense the guys following him before he sees them, and he's able to get in a few good kicks and punches before they put him down. Then he just covers up the way he used to and takes it, hoping nothing gets broken too badly.

"Tell Yasha he can't run forever," one of them says, his breath sour and hot and his voice low and hard in Steve's ear. "If he doesn't pay soon, it won't just be a friendly warning next time." With one last kick to Steve's kidneys, the thugs take off.

Steve drags himself back to his apartment, turning the encounter over in his head. He's not stupid. He knows that whatever Bucky and Natasha are into, it's probably illegal, but he didn't expect it to involve the Russian mob.

He's pretty sure he doesn't have any cracked ribs, though he's sore and bruised all over, and he's got a nice bruise rising a mottled purple on his jaw. He takes a long hot shower and some Advil, and heads downstairs to Bucky's apartment, which is surprisingly quiet for this time of the evening.

He knocks this time, but he doesn't recognize the blonde who answers the door. "Is Bucky around?"

"No one here by that name," she says.

"He lives in this apartment," Steve insists. He puts his foot over the threshold and presses the flat of his palm to the door so she can't close it on him. 

She eyes him sourly. "Do you mean Yasha?"

"Yelena, who is it?" Natasha, a towel wrapped around her head, appears in the doorway behind Yelena.

"It's me," Steve says unnecessarily.

"I see that." She says something to Yelena in Russian and the girl disappears into the apartment. Natasha steps out into the hallway and pulls the door nearly closed behind her. "James is in trouble." She looks Steve over critically. "He didn't want it to touch you, but I see that it has."

Steve shrugs. "I can take a beating. I just want to know where he is, and if there's some way I can help him."

"Not unless you've got a few hundred thousand dollars stashed away upstairs," she says dryly. "I'd tell you not to worry, but I can see that would be pointless. Instead, I'll tell you that he usually finds his way out of trouble and comes home."

"Not always," Steve says, remembering his disappearance from the group home so many years ago. "I want to help him."

"Well, you can't."

"And that's it? You just let him go?"

Natasha shakes her head. "You think I don't want to help him?"

"I don't know what to think," Steve replies, "but if it's just money that's the problem, I can fix that. I can get money."

Her mouth twists. "You think you're worth that much to Stark? Really? Haven't you seen the gossip from Malibu recently?" His face falls and she takes pity on him. "Go home, Steve. I'm sure James would appreciate you being safe more than you going into debt for him, or worse, getting yourself killed because you were too stupid to walk away."

Steve sets his jaw. "I'm going to help him." He turns away and she grabs his hand.

"Be careful," she says, pressing her lips to the back of his hand. "James was right. You're lucky I like you."

"I'll be back," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say.

She's right about the gossip. Steve almost never looks at that stuff, but it's all over TMZ and Gawker, pictures of Tony and Pepper out with Dr. Bruce Banner, noted nuclear physicist and humanitarian. They've got their arms around him, and in one picture, Tony is kissing his cheek. Tony has never even let himself be seen in public with Steve. 

Steve doesn't really mind being replaced, though he wishes they'd told him instead of letting him find out like this, but he's frustrated because he can't call them for money now, and there's no way he can raise that much on his own, let alone quickly enough to save Bucky. 

His gaze falls on the painting of Natasha. It's the best thing he's done by far, but he has a couple others he's held back as well, not wanting to flood the market, and also wanting to impress Pepper the next time she asks to see what he's done lately, but maybe there's no point in that anymore. He's been approached by other collectors and connoisseurs since Pepper started sponsoring him; he digs through the detritus littering his kitchen for business cards and cocktail napkins with phone numbers hastily scribbled on them. 

It takes him another three days to raise the money, and a couple more to convert it all to cash. He's sold everything, and agreed to a number of commissions for which he insisted on being paid upfront. He doesn't care if he's ruined his reputation or made the wrong kind of name for himself. He's not letting Bucky go again if he can help it.

He doesn't bother to knock this time, just pushes his way into the apartment past Yelena and a number of other young women to where Natasha is seated at the kitchen table.

"I have money," he says, unzipping his leather portfolio to show her three hundred thousand dollars in twenties. "Tell me where to take it."

"That's more than he owes," she says. "Don't you want to keep some of it?"

"I want them to never bother him again," Steve says. "Tell me what I have to do."

*

It's less dramatic than Steve expected. Natasha takes him to a social club in Brighton Beach. He lets her do all the talking (mostly because he doesn't speak Russian; she could be selling them all up the river, but he figures Bucky trusts her, so he can't do any less), and after a couple rounds of vodka shots, they hand over the money and the boss--Steve never does catch his name and he's probably healthier for it--promises to leave Bucky alone from now on, as long as Bucky stays out of his business. Steve doesn't inquire as to what that business is. Yet another thing he's better off not knowing. It's the past, and Steve's determined to leave it all behind.

"Thank you," Natasha says when they're back home. 

He shakes his head. "It's what he would have done for me."

"I still appreciate it," she says, kissing him. "And I meant what I said. I'd invite you in, but it looks like you have a visitor." She nods at the Bentley pulling up in front of the building. "I'll let him know he's safe."

Steve sighs and squares his shoulders. He waits for Pepper at the front door, surprised to see Tony with her, and behind them, their chauffeur, who carries a wrapped canvas with him.

They troop up the stairs to his apartment, which probably won't be his anymore after this conversation, but maybe he can crash with Bucky and Natasha downstairs. 

"I didn't expect you back until after Thanksgiving," he says mildly once they're all in his apartment. The chauffeur sets the canvas down and leaves, closing the door behind him.

"We didn't plan on it, until I heard you'd held a fire sale and didn't invite us," Pepper says, taking off her gloves and unbuttoning her coat. "I thought we had an agreement."

"I saw the pictures of you with that doctor," Steve says. "I thought maybe our agreement had come to an end."

Pepper looks abashed. "Yes, Dr. Banner is quite charming."

"Brilliant, too," Tony says. "Not quite the Adonis you are, but cute in his absentminded professor way."

"Still," Pepper says, "I would have expected you to come to us if you were in trouble or needed money."

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "I didn't think it was," he casts around for the right word, "appropriate."

"Well, you were wrong," Pepper says. She gestures and Tony unwraps the painting of Natasha setting the world on fire. 

"You said this one wasn't for sale," Tony says, "and yet there it was."

"We thought you might want it back," Pepper says. "Consider it a parting gift."

"Thank you," he says. "I'll be out of the apartment by the end of the week."

"No need for that," Pepper says generously. "And we'd like to continue to support your work, Steve. Perhaps you can do a mural for us when Stark Tower is ready."

"I'd like that," he says, already envisioning the march of progress in Stark red and gold, from fighter jets to Jericho missiles, and then the icy blue of the arc reactor.

"It's been fun," Tony says.

Once they're gone, he slumps into a chair, feeling like a marionette whose strings have been cut. He's still sitting there an hour later, unaware of time passing, when Natasha bursts in.

"I think James may have gone and done something stupid," she says, waving some papers at him. 

"So what else is new?" he mutters, winning a laugh from her.

"He booked a ticket to Australia," she says, fanning the papers again. 

"How do you know?"

"I read his email," she says shamelessly. "His flight leaves in a couple of hours."

"What?"

"And he's not answering his phone."

"Fuck."

"Yelena has a car we can borrow," Natasha says as Steve pulls on his coat. She stops in front of the painting. "Is that me?"

"Yes."

"Huh."

"Yes. Now let's go. The traffic to JFK is going to be hellish."

They're on the stairs, arguing about how to get there fastest--Steve doesn't want to go all the way to the BQE when Atlantic Avenue is right there, but Natasha says that the lights on Atlantic mean stop-and-go traffic all the way--when Bucky opens the front door. 

"Honey, I'm home," he says. 

"I could punch you," Natasha says.

"I could kiss you," Steve says at the same time. He's surprised they don't trip each other and tumble down the stairs in a heap in their rush to get to Bucky.

"I vote yes on the kissing, no on the punching," Bucky says with a lopsided grin.

"I can work with that," Natasha says grudgingly, fitting herself into the curve of Bucky's right arm. He wraps the left one around Steve and holds him close too. She slaps Bucky's shoulder and he winces. "Idiot." She sounds overwhelmed for the first time since Steve met her.

"Hey."

"Seriously," Steve says, nuzzling at Bucky's temple and breathing him in before pressing a kiss there. "Don't do anything stupid for a while, huh?"

"I'll try," Bucky says. "I make no guarantees."

"Idiot," Steve says, everything he's feeling too big for that one word or his whole body to contain.

"Yeah, yeah," Bucky says, understanding anyway. He huddles into the space between Steve and Natasha. "I owe you. I owe you a lot."

"No," Steve replies. "You really don't."

Bucky closes his eyes and presses his forehead to Steve's cheek. "Okay."

"Good."

Natasha glances between them, assessing. "Since we're going with kissing instead of punching, can we get started with that now?"

"Yeah," Steve says. "I'd like that."

He kisses them, first Bucky, then Natasha, softly, with promise and intent, and then leads them back upstairs to his apartment, and to a future without strings.

end


End file.
